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My definition of a long shot: Any person, idea, or movement which has nearly every obstacle ahead of them imagined to complete a goal, yet still goes after it and completes it or some other unintentional and/or unstated goal. I’ve started thinking about these ‘long shots’ because of the Sochi 2014 Olympics currently going on.

Of course, there is the Jamaican bobsled team made (more) famous by the movie Cool Runnings. The fictionalized movie was based on the real 1988 4-man Jamaican bobsled team in Calgary, Canada. The team during these Olympics in Russia, however, was decided to just be a 2-man team due to the increased costs of 4 people. Even then, right before the Olympics, they still needed more than $30,000 for a lot of related costs; however, they not only reached that, but received almost $50,000 more than they needed which helped with some upgrades to the bobsled.

via bleacherreport.com

I was excited to see, because of my Filipino heritage, the only athlete from the Philippines to compete in these Winter Olympics, Michael Christian Martinez. He is the first Filipino Winter Olympian since the country sent “an Alpine skier to the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville, France” (New York Times) and the first figure skater. I really don’t know that much about him, but I’m just glad that he got the funding from his family and the government because winter sports are extremely expensive and it’s just a shame that more people are not able to at least try it out due to costs. And he didn’t do too bad, he got 19th place, so not bad at all.